“You have got to be kidding me. That’s all you’re good for? I’ve had better—”
The short-lived though furious zombie-sex had loosened the power cord enough that Vidu’s hand had slipped out. He was able to grab the trash-talking senior by the throat and pulled her in for a massive bite to the shoulder.
Eileen screamed and backed away, leaving behind an oozing mass of tissue that her former captive scarfed down with gusto. She stumbled to the bar and poured one final glass of bourbon as Vidu tugged violently once more on the handcuff. The lubrication from his blood combined with the fact that Eileen hadn’t made the cuffs tight enough to begin with let Vidu’s other hand pop free.
He charged forward to finish her off, but stopped cold when Eileen’s whiskey glass shattered on the floor. She had turned, and now the pair of zombies looked stupidly at each other in silence like an awkward couple with nothing to say.
Due to his Sri Lankan upbringing, Vidu had always held the elderly in high esteem, which meant this event was all the more sordid. Unbeknownst to anyone else, he had worked so hard to rip people off at the dealership in order to send money home to his relatives. The truth was, Vidu was half the douchebag his friends thought he was. But if they could only see him now: pantless and covered in God knows what kind of bodily fluids while fraternizing with a one-legged granny named Eileen of all things. The jokes would practically tell themselves. Only it wasn’t funny.
There was a clicking sound as the front door unlocked from the outside. It was one of Eileen’s sons coming to look for dear old mom. Big mistake.
Both zombies were upon him before he even stepped inside, and the expressions on his face went from surprise to fear to sadness in mere moments.
Done with their feast, the new summer/winter couple tore off down Armitage Avenue in search of new victims with Eileen falling behind due to her age and health conditions.
A few blocks away, a handful of other cannibals were attempting to break into the local charter school while children from the summer breakfast program screamed inside, further driving the zombies into a frenzy.
An old pickup truck bounced the curb and stopped with a rattle as a potbellied man hopped out and quickly moved to the bed of his truck. His name was Tom Fisher, and he was the school’s gym teacher and volunteer landscaper. Tom had come to school that morning to pull weeds, but he was about to get his hands dirty with work of a very different kind.
One zombie ceased pounding on the door and made his way to the truck, as did Vidu and Eileen. Tom turned to face them and then pulled the starter rope on his old sixteen-inch chainsaw, usually employed for cutting down small tree limbs. It fired right up and he gave a quick swipe at the lead zombie, catching the former alderman right underneath the chin.
The gush of blood was more than Tom expected and it immediately waterlogged the chainsaw just as the Sri Lankan arrived, hungry and half-naked. So Tom improvised and slapped him in the face with the steel blade, knocking him down and opening a deep gash on his forehead. The wound bled directly into Vidu’s eyes, forcing him to search for his prey using those newfound super hearing abilities. While he reached about blindly, the teacher furiously tried to restart the chainsaw.
Of course, this is when Eileen caught up and climbed right over Vidu’s back. In her haste, the woman’s prosthetic leg came loose and she toppled over. To add insult to injury, the chainsaw started back up and Tom brought it down hard, lodging it six inches into her skull.
Still blinded and now disoriented by the loud chainsaw, Vidu pounced after Tom in the wrong direction and was immediately hit by a passing car, whereupon his naked lower half became lodged in the windshield.
Tom yanked his improvised weapon out and retreated to the rear of the dilapidated school as the car disappeared around the corner with Vidu flailing away.
Minutes later, a passenger in the car was finally able to push Vidu back through the windshield, jingle bells and all.
He hit the pavement at high speed and rolled for twenty yards before the curb stopped him. Unfazed, Vidu sat up with a mean case of road rash and his left arm dangling uselessly beside him, shattered in six places. The good thing was he couldn’t feel it.
So far that morning he’d had his fingers bitten off, been turned into a zombie, and then got beaten with a fake leg before getting kidnapped and raped by an old woman. After that, he’d been smashed in the face with a chainsaw and hit by a car. And it was only 9:30.
But he had neither the capability nor the inclination to dwell on the past. So when the unmistakable sound of children’s laughter reached his ears, as did the loud noise of a carousel, Vidu stood up in a hurry, banging his head on an elephant-shaped sign. It read “Zoo Parking,” but it might as well have read “Free Food,” because that’s what he was after.
Battered and bloody but far from broken, Vidu headed towards the happy sounds. Unfortunately for many, many people, his morning was just picking up steam.
Check Out “Dead Drunk: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse... One Beer at a Time”
Charlie Campbell was your average, balding, thirty-year-old alcoholic with a dead-end job and a penchant for shambling through life one mistake after another. However, none of that mattered following the sudden arrival of a mysterious sickness that brought with it infected mobs of zombie-like creatures thirsting for the flesh of the living.
Trapped in a Chicago apartment the morning after a raucous bachelor party, Charlie and his old fraternity buddies must battle for survival against the cannibalistic horde, a military invasion and their own rampant stupidity.
With supplies, common sense and brain cells dwindling by the hour, the motley crew — including a racist cop, a Sri Lankan used car salesman, a stoner landlord and a pet raccoon — must pull out all the stops to avoid joining the ranks of the dead.
If you like zombies, action and humor, crack a beer, pull up a barstool, and prepare for one wild ride!
Credits
I would like to thank all of the people who have helped me finish this latest project as well as those who have given me encouragement along the way. I never in my wildest dreams believed I would have actual fans, and now I have messages coming in from places like New Zealand, Great Britain, India, and Mexico. The support truly has been phenomenal.
I’d like to once more thank Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers for creating another fantastic cover design, and the editors at Manuscript Magic for their excellent editing work.
Thank you to my friends and family for believing in me, thank you to my lovely wife, Kristin, and my boys, Kevin and Ryan, for keeping life interesting, and thank you to my parents for allowing me to watch gory zombie movies at an inappropriately young age.
Most importantly, thank you for taking an interest in my books. If you keep reading them, I’ll keep writing them, and that’s a promise.
Richard Johnson
Weekend at Vidu's: A Dead Drunk Short Page 2